Andrew Carnegie. "The man who dies rich dies disgraced," was the motto of Andrew Carnegie, a pioneer in the steel industry and one of the wealthiest Americans at the turn of the 20th century. After building a fortune of some $100 million in the 1890s, Carnegie's last years were spent giving away as much money as possible in an effort to shed his image as one of the era's leading "robber barons." Among other bequests to good causes, he established the Carnegie Institute of Technology and hundreds of Carnegie Free Public Libraries across the U.S.

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